Archive for October, 2015

Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers entered service in 1991. Equipped with impressive sensor suite, the heart of it being Aegis Combat System and the SPY-1D radar system, these destroyers are truly a multi-task ships. They are effective in Anti-aircraft, Anti-submarine, Anti-surface warfare as well as strategic land strike role using the array of Tomahawk cruise missiles. Since 2005, they are the only destroyers in US Navy – there are more than 60 in service and around 40 still waiting to be build.

USS Cole was commissioned as 17th Arleigh Burke destroyer on March 11th, 1996. On October 12th, 2000, while anchored at the port of Aden, Yemen, a group of Al-Qaeda suicide bombers sailed a small boat to the port hull and detonated explosive charges creating a hole 12m wide, killing 17 crew members and injuring 39. The ship was later transferred to the United States aboard a Norwegian heavy cargo ship MV Blue Marlin for repairs and resumed operational duty in April 2002.

There’s nothing worse to me than some incident happening when you are in the final stages of finishing the model. And that’s exactly what happened with my Cole. As I was giving it the final Gloss Coat of Gunze Mr. Color Super Clear, the white decal for the helicopter pad all whirled up. The decal literally melted in contact with the lacquer, something that hasn’t happened to me before. I find it even more strange, that other decals were not affected.

The damage

I tried solving it as much as possible by carefully painting the markings using white and deck grey. The result isn’t stellar, but under a coat of weathering doesn’t look half as bad.

Anyhow, the model is now more or less finished. What remains to be done is finish the water display base.